Secular Trans Feminism

Zinnia Jones is a writer and videoblogger, co-blogging with Heather McNamara and Lux Pickel. She's written extensively on the subjects of secularism, feminism, and being transgender. Since 2008, her videos have received over 8 million views, and her articles have been featured in Autostraddle, the Huffington Post, and The Fight magazine. You can reach her at zjemptv@gmail.com, or on Twitter at @ZJemptv, and her YouTube channel is at www.zinniajones.com.

About Lux Pickel

Luxander Pickel is a genderqueer atheist and nerdy Whovian. They care very much about human rights, destroying harmful social systems, and promoting rational thinking. Lux struggles with depression and spends a lot of their time playing video games. When less debilitated by chronic illness, they love to write about social justice and make art; on a good day they love chatting about sex and relationships from a poly-demi-pansexual perspective.

EVENTS

Let’s not forget what Dinesh D’Souza said about 9/11

On a recent episode of “Secure Freedom Radio”, conservative author Dinesh D’Souza had this to say about President Obama:

It fits in this way Janet, because I think Obama is weirdly sympathetic to Muslim jihadis who are captured in Iraq or Afghanistan, giving them constitutional rights, wanting to close down Guantanamo or when Obama keeps taking the Palestinian position against Israel, some people think that the reason he does this is because he must be a secret Muslim himself. I think that’s wrong. But what I do think Obama thinks is he thinks, ‘look, America is the evil power occupying these poor Third World countries, so the Muslims who are fighting against America are freedom fighters, they’re like Mandela, they’re like Gandhi, they’re like Obama’s own dad fighting to push the British out of Kenya.’ He views those guys in favorable terms and he sees America, not Iran or North Korea, but America as the rogue nation that has to be pulled back.

Such accusations are especially striking in light of what D’Souza wrote in his 2007 book, The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11:

In faulting the cultural left, I am not making the absurd accusation that this group blew up the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I am saying that the cultural left and its allies in Congress, the media, Hollywood, the nonprofit sector and the universities are the primary cause of the volcano of anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world. The Muslims who carried out the 9/11 attacks were the product of this visceral rage—some of it based on legitimate concerns, some of it based on wrongful prejudice—but all of it fueled and encouraged by the cultural left. Thus without the cultural left, 9/11 would not have happened. …

Shortly after the fall of Baghdad, graffiti began to appear on the walls of the city and its environs. The following scrawl caught my attention. “Marriage of the same sex became legal in America. Is this, with the mafia and drugs, what you want to bring to Iraq, America? Is this the freedom you promised?” Even if the source of this statement is of little consequence, the content is revealing. It is not an objection to freedom, but to the kind of freedom associated with drug legalization and homosexual marriage. As such, it is a vital clue to the sources of Muslim rage. And here is an excerpt from a recent videotape by Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy of Bin Laden and reputed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. “The freedom we want is not the freedom to use women as a commodity to gain clients, win deals, or attract tourists; it is not the freedom of AIDS and an industry of obscenities and homosexual marriages; it is not the freedom of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.”

What these statements convey is that these Islamic radicals do not hate America because of its wealth and power; they hate America because of how Americans use that wealth and power. They do not hate us for our freedom; they hate us because of what we do with our freedom. The radical Muslims are convinced that America and Europe have become sick, demented societies that destroy religious belief, undermine traditional morality, dissolve the patriarchal family, and corrupt the innocence of children. …

There seems to be a growing belief in traditional cultures—a belief encouraged but by no means created by Islamic fundamentalism—that America is materially prosperous but culturally decadent. It is technologically sophisticated but morally depraved. As former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto puts it, “Within the Muslim world, there is a reaction against the sexual overtones that come across in American mass culture. America is viewed through this prism as an immoral society.” In his book The Crisis of Islam, Bernard Lewis rehearses what he calls the “standard litany of American offenses recited in the lands of Islam” and ends with this one: “Yet the most powerful accusation of all is the degeneracy and debauchery of the American way of life.” As these observations suggest, what angers religious Muslims is not the American Constitution but the scandalous sexual mores they see on American movies and television. What disgusts them are not free elections but the sights of hundreds of homosexuals kissing each other and taking marriage vows. The person that horrifies them the most is not John Locke but Hillary Clinton. …

We should not dismiss the Islamic or traditional critique so easily. In fact, as our own domestic and cultural debate shows, we know that many of the concerns raised by the radical Muslims are widely-shared in our own society. Indeed, many conservative and religious Americans agree with the Islamic fundamentalists that American culture has become increasingly vulgar, trivial and disgusting. I am not merely referring to the reality shows where contestants eat maggots or the talk shows where guests reveal the humiliating details of their sex lives. I am also referring to “high culture,” to liberal culture that offers itself as refined and sophisticated.

Here, for example, is a brief excerpt from Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues,” a play that won rave reviews and Hollywood accolades and is now routinely performed (according to its own publicity materials) in “more than 20 countries, including China and Turkey.” In the book version of the play—now sold in translation in Pakistan, India, and Egypt—Ensler offers what she terms “Vagina Occurrences”: “Glenn Close gets 2,500 people to stand up and chant the word cunt…There is now a Cunt Workshop at Wesleyan University…Roseanne performs ‘What Does Your Vagina Smell Like?” in her underwear for two thousand people…Alanis Morisette and Audra McDonald sing the cunt piece.” And so on. If all of this makes many Americans uncomfortable and embarrassed—which may be part of Ensler’s objective—one can only imagine how it is received in traditional cultures where the public recitation of such themes and language is considered a grotesque violation of manners and morals. …

Thus we have the first way in which the cultural left is responsible for 9/11. The left has produced a moral shift in American society that has resulted in a deluge of gross depravity and immorality. This deluge threatens to engulf our society and is imposing itself on the rest of the world. The Islamic radicals are now convinced that America represents the revival of pagan barbarism in the world, and 9/11 represents their ongoing battle with what they perceive to be the forces of Satan.

So, who really seems “weirdly sympathetic to Muslim jihadis” here? Who do you think believes “America is the evil power occupying these poor Third World countries” and sees America as “the rogue nation that has to be pulled back”? Obama, or the guy who blames The Vagina Monologues, Hillary Clinton and “hundreds of homosexuals kissing each other” for provoking attacks by Islamic extremists?

Comments

Personally, I think throwing off repressive sexual mores and getting rid of the patriarchal family is a moral step in the right direction. If jihadists want to read this as decline, I care about their opinion no more than I would care of a person arguing that abandoning slavery meant throwing off God’s standards for humanist ethics.

Roseann performing in her underwear may not be high art, but she’s free to do it. She’s free to do the stupid, the creepy, the disgusting, and her fans are free to watch, because it’s a free country. Don’t like it? Don’t watch.

I never heard of this guy until today.Here’s a speech I found that he gave a while back.He’s just another right wing windbag.I see he helped put out a totally anti-obama propaganda movie,which I’m gonna have to force myself to go the movie theaters and see because I know it won’t be in theaters for long and I just have to see it for myself.

Please don’t give him your $$ .He has no info that he didn’t make up . All I know that saw it wanted their $$ back. It’s a bad conspiracy theory. An a figment of his imagination. He actually has the same views of Americans as the Islamic militant and admitted that in an interview but he loves he can live in America and make big bucks of Americans he looks down on.Save your hard earned money and don’t give it to a wind bag jackass.

“traditional cultures where the public recitation of such themes and language is considered a grotesque violation of manners and moral”

If you listen to what the anti-Americans (and even the pro-Americans for that matter) in other countries say, it’s not backlash against open society stuff. The anger is centered on our military presence, Christian conversion attempts and economic domination. D’Sousa is ok with those. Europeans are largely concerned about the Christian right’s hold on US political power. Liberal cultural values are way down the list.

I notice that D’Souza is blaming the victim when it comes to 9/11. “I mean, the terrorists are obviously to blame, but I’m JUST SAYING some of the blame has to be on the Americans who allowed gay people to exist.”

D’Souza has much admiration for the totalitarian aspects of Islamic nations, and the way they can enforce religious doctrine and wishes American society to be more like that. The Enemy At Home is a scary read, and Dinesh D’Souza a scary person.

“Today many American mothers work, not because they have to, but because they want to. Many mothers choose to have a career because it is more self-fulfilling than the life of a fulltime mom. . . . And when the fetus gets in the way of a pregnant woman’s plans for her life, even abortion becomes a mode of self-fulfillment.”

It’s a bit surprising to see a conservative so openly sympathising with terrorists, but the Christian right have always overlapped with the Islamists when it comes to hating America. I just think it’s nice of D’Souza to make it clear which side he’s on. Personally, I’m with Roseanne and Lady Gaga, not Osama bin Laden and the Taliban; he’s made it quite clear that he’s on the other side.

(His explanations for the 9/11 attacks are still bullshit, though. They had nothing to do with American cultural values and everything to do with foreign policy.)

One of the reasons one can be sure that D’Souza is an obscenely dishonest sack of shit is that a person genuinely this stupid would not remember to occasionally relieve themselves and as a result die from massive blockage.

D’Souza seems to forget who his friends on the right really, really like: Israel. Who do the jihadis hate more – the left for Lady Gaga and the Vagina Monologues or Sheldon Adelson, AIPAC and those who try to make the Israeli tail wag the American dog.

“There seems to be a growing belief in traditional cultures—a belief encouraged but by no means created by Islamic fundamentalism—that America is materially prosperous but culturally decadent. It is technologically sophisticated but morally depraved.”

Hm.. who was it saying those things in all those spy movies of the Cold War.. sounds vaguely familiar..

According to Dinesh ,our culture, movies, music, television , working mothers ,homosexuals and the right to marry, are the cause for the eruption of anger in the Islamic world and the cause of 9/11 Cause according to him and the militants we are morally depraved …the all knowing Dinesh sounds just like Hitler and hitler wrote books too. Iam just wondering why Dinesh still resides in the U S of A maybe because it is the best place in the world and he makes big $$$ slamming it ,all other countries would have kicked him out at the least or arrested him at best, he has the freedom he begrudges the rest of the country , how dare we not mirror him and his shallow ideas. Dinesh was on the show “Politicly Incorrect” 2 weeks after 9/11 an said how brave the terrorist were to fly the planes into the Twin Towers and the host agreed with him on this point and he was fired and Dinesh got nothing but more book contracts, strange that no one every put his face with the hosts and had 2 people involved in being politically offensive, cause this great country he lives in yet one more time has let this ingrate slide…only in the U S of A ….Dinesh D ‘Souza.. how immoral of us. He could take his butt back to Mumbai and get far far away from morally depraved Americans, I’ll buy the ticket.

“… the cultural left and its allies in Congress, the media, Hollywood, the nonprofit sector and the universities are the primary cause of the volcano of anger toward America that is erupting from the Islamic world.”

The Islamic world is reacting to American military-industrial complex. not the “cultural left” and our love of tight jeans, short skirts and pre-marital sex and condoms, to name a few. If you bomb people long enough, killing their mothers and fathers and sister and brother and friends and neighbors and propping up corrupt puppet leaders of their countries, eventually they’ll crack. Hence, the rise of Jihadist Islam.

Can we declare Dinesh a traitor and have him extradited to Saudi Arabia? Methinks his natural inclination for preaching and the religious intolerance endemic in that nation will clean up this douchebag nicely for us.